Catalonian Association Balk at Legalizing Euthanasia

October 06, 2006
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Responding to the latest report of Catalonia's Consultative Bioethics Committee on euthanasia, an association of Christian doctors released a statement that said: "We doctors do not want to be executioners."

The statement, written by the president of the Association of Christian Doctors of Catalonia, Ferran García-Fària, considers that euthanasia "is outside the provision of the profession" and affirms that the aim of the doctor is to cure and improve the patient.

It also warns that acceptance of the first case of euthanasia "will produce a cascade which will include the handicapped, the demented and the elderly."

"When what has been prohibited is permitted and practiced, it is increasingly considered normal, especially if it has public and private financial advantages and is defended by some ideological currents," wrote García-Fària.

For the association, the legalization of euthanasia implies an "ethical decadence," which ranges from the presentation of euthanasia as applicable only in extreme situations with the strict control of the law, to the generalization of its application to patients who fit the law, in which involuntary euthanasia will become an obligation for those who accept the voluntary.

García-Fària pointed out that a person's dignity always has an "absolute intrinsic value," and the obligation to defend it.